Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum today announced it will celebrate 25 years of the prestigious National Design Awards program and named the 2025 Award winners.
Launched in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council, the National Design Awards and its associated public programs seek to increase national awareness of the impact of design in everyday life. Now in their 25th year, the National Design Awards have evolved and adapted over time but stayed true to core Smithsonian values of innovation and civic service.
This year’s winners, selected by a multidisciplinary jury, are recognized for design innovation and impact in improving the world, and will be honored at an awards celebration Thursday, April 3.
“Design touches all aspects of our lives every single day—from the buildings we live, learn and work in, to the physical and digital systems that deliver our basic services, the clothes we wear, the spaces we gather in or the creativity and beauty that help us understand ourselves as a nation—and yet design’s undeniable influence can go unseen,” said Maria Nicanor, director of the museum. “Since 2000, Cooper Hewitt has aimed to change that, shining a light on the most influential and powerful design of our era. This year, we recognize 2025’s exceptional winners, but also the hundreds of past winners and jury members who form the vast network of thinkers and practitioners actively shaping our everyday.”
This year’s National Design Award recipients are:
- Kim Hastreiter, Design Visionary
- ilumiNACIÓN by Resilient Power Puerto Rico, Climate Action
- Nu Goteh, Emerging Designer
- Michael Maltzan Architecture, Architecture
- Matt Willey, Communication Design
- Emerging Objects, Digital Design
- Melitta Baumeister, Fashion Design
- Little Wing Lee, Interior Design
- TERREMOTO, Landscape Architecture
- Jules Sherman, Product Design
“The National Design Awards evaluate the state of design as it crosses 10 different categories, from architecture to climate action to fashion design to product design, and this year’s winners show how empowering, inclusive and diverse these disciplines of design can be,” said Maurice Cox, chair of the 2025 National Design Awards jury. “On the 25th anniversary of this award, I am proud that the winners are increasingly a reflection of who we are in America and who we hope to be.”
For a quarter of a century, with a roster of more than 200 alumni, the National Design Awards program has reflected and forecasted the indelible impact of design in improving the world. The past 25 years have witnessed marked advances in the fields of digital technology, materials and techniques, which have been harnessed by National Design Award winners to build a more inclusive, sustainable and equitable future. This 25th class of award winners are continuing to push forward inspired ideas and innovation in their respective design disciplines.
The official 25th anniversary presentation of the National Design Awards will take place at a seated dinner Thursday, April 3, at the James Burden Mansion, overlooking the museum’s Carnegie Mansion home. In recognition of this milestone year, the awards ceremony will be followed by Cooper Hewitt’s first-ever House Party, to be held at the museum, which welcomes the larger design community to celebrate with National Design Award winners from the past 25 years.
THE 2025 NATIONAL DESIGN AWARD RECIPIENTS
Design Visionary: Kim Hastreiter
The Design Visionary award, recognizing an individual, company or organization who has made a profound contribution to advancing the field, is given to Kim Hastreiter.
Hastreiter is an artist and a multihyphenate communicator who shares ideas and discoveries in many mediums: art, zines, books, social media and podcasts. A cultural anthropologist, Hastreiter has made a great impact by forecasting cultural movements, talents and trends and by collaborating with the art and design community to make big ideas happen. She cofounded PAPER magazine, where she was creative director, curator, editor, publisher and writer; she covered the fields of design, art, fashion and pop culture until the magazine was sold in 2017. Hastreiter works to bring culture to life with projects ranging from a 17-year collaboration with Target on its Design for All partnerships with well-known and emerging designers to conceptual pop-up “department stores” in Los Angeles, New York and Miami. In these projects, she examines the relationships among art, commerce and culture—currently, with a series of zines that document and commemorate the fleeting digital commentary made by artists via memes. She is also an avid collector, and her newest book, STUFF (A New York Life of Cultural Chaos), which launches in the spring of 2025, is both a memoir and a history book that is told through the stories of her material goods.
Climate Action: ilumiNACIÓN by Resilient Power Puerto Rico
The Climate Action award, recognizing a design project for its significant contributions to addressing the urgency of the global climate crisis, is presented to ilumiNACIÓN by Resilient Power Puerto Rico.
Developed by the nonprofit organization Resilient Power Puerto Rico (RPPR), ilumiNACIÓN is a web-based platform designed to drive equitable and sustainable climate solutions while strengthening communities’ capacity to respond, rebuild and prosper after extreme climate events. RPPR was formed in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria and works to increase uninterrupted access to decentralized distributed renewable energy for marginalized groups and communities; for example, by co-developing 44 solar energy systems and providing technical assistance to dozens of community-based organizations. ilumiNACIÓN will include an energy calculator, data collection tools and a georeferenced climate vulnerability tool, all aimed at generating actionable information for communities to document their energy and climate needs and participate in optimizing energy efficiency, solar energy adoption and resilience initiatives. The platform’s design was led by RPPR’s executive director, Alejandra Castrodad-Rodríguez, in collaboration with Victor Cuadrado Landrau and Gustavo Castrodad Rodríguez.
Emerging Designer: Nu Goteh
The Emerging Designer award, given in recognition of a designer or practice who has demonstrated profound talent in the early stages of their career to contribute to the future of design, honors Nu Goteh.
Goteh is a designer, strategist and educator who envisions design as a tool for communities to reclaim their futures. As founder and principal of Room for Magic and co-founder, managing partner and creative director of Deem Journal, Goteh is at the forefront of an emerging generation of designers who integrate design, culture, art, community and social practice. Through Deem’s global platform, which has expanded beyond the print journal to include experiential activations and digital content, Goteh works to create a more inclusive future by examining design as a process instead of as output. His community-centric studio practice, Room for Magic, brings together marketing, storytelling, creative direction and human-centered design for clients such as the Art for Justice Fund, the Ford Foundation, the World Peace Foundation, the National Memorial for the Underground Railroad and the Urban Civil Rights Museum, as well as for brands like Jordan and Headspace. Influenced by his Liberian heritage and passion for counterculture, Goteh is a global voice for design as a social practice.
Architecture: Michael Maltzan Architecture
The Architecture award, given to an individual or firm for their contributions to the built environment that advance the understanding of spatial experiences, goes to Michael Maltzan Architecture.
Founded in 1995, Michael Maltzan Architecture is a Los Angeles-based architecture practice whose work spans affordable housing, innovative urban infrastructure and cross-disciplinary educational spaces. The firm’s practice is rooted in a deep belief in architecture’s capacity to create new physical, cultural and social connections, and the firm’s groundbreaking work is often located in challenging locations. Sometimes the work is intended to point to a different future for an organization, a community or an individual. Notable projects include Inner City Arts, a multiphase youth arts center in the heart of Skid Row; Star Apartments, a first-of-its-kind prefabricated construction; and the Los Angeles Sixth Street Viaduct, which radically reimagines infrastructure as civic amenity in the contemporary city.
Communication Design: Matt Willey
The Communication Design award, recognizing an individual or firm for the impactful use of design at the service of information sharing, messaging and overall communication, is presented to Matt Willey.
Willey is a graphic designer. He joined Pentagram as a partner in 2020 after five years as the art director of The New York Times Magazine. Willey has worked with several of the leading titles in independent publishing, including Port, Elephant, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review and the UK newspaper The Independent. In 2021, he redesigned The Big Issue, the largest street magazine in the world. He is currently the creative director and co-founder of the annual literary magazine INQUE. Willey has developed branding systems and title sequences for a wide range of clients, including the design of the titles for the award-winning BBC series Killing Eve. A consistent thread throughout Willey’s work is the incorporation of custom-drawn typefaces, which he draws for the specific contexts of the brands, publications and stories in which they appear. Willey donates the proceeds of several of his typefaces to charity. He has helped raise more than $150,000 for Cancer Research UK and for Macmillan Cancer Support through the BuyFontsSaveLives initiative.
Digital Design: Emerging Objects
The Digital Design award, given to an individual or firm for the innovative design of digital products, environments, systems, experiences and services, is presented to Emerging Objects.
Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello, founders of Emerging Objects, specialize in innovations in 3D printing architecture, products, software, hardware and materials. They view themselves as digital alchemists, material scientists and cooks, saying they see themselves “inventing recipes that allow us to ask questions about the future of the digital world through the lens of 3D printing.” They digitally design 3D-printed environments and objects for the 21st century, in the process creating new biodigital materials from items in the waste stream such as sawdust, coffee grounds and rubber tires, and they examine how traditional materials can be transformed into digital materials of tomorrow using local and Indigenous materials such as wildfire ash, earth and salt. Rael and San Fratello are also professors at public universities who bring digital design and fabrication to thousands of students.
Fashion Design: Melitta Baumeister
The Fashion Design award, given to an individual or firm for the forward-thinking design of apparel, accessory, jewelry, footwear and textiles, honors Melitta Baumeister.
Melitta Baumeister is an independent brand and maker of expressively unique wearable garments that reject trends, body standards and beauty ideals. Based on a futuristic, minimalist aesthetic, the brand’s clothing often exaggerates volume and creates sculptural silhouettes, using innovative techniques and materials to infuse the surprising, the mysterious and the humorous of the everyday. Baumeister’s designs are intended to impact not only the wearer, but also the space around them. The brand is led by Melitta Baumeister, a German-born fashion designer now based in New York, who received her Master of Fine Arts in fashion design at Parsons The New School. She works closely with her partner, Michal Plata, who brings an interdisciplinary perspective shaped by his previous experience as a car and context designer at BMW Advanced Design. Their synergy blends artistic experimentation with conceptual rigor.
Interior Design: Little Wing Lee
The Interior Design award, honoring an individual or firm for their contributions to interior environments that advance the understanding of spatial experiences, is given to Little Wing Lee.
Lee is an interior designer known for her sharp eye for color, texture and materiality, along with her thoughtful and narrative-driven approach to design. In 2019, she started Studio & Projects, whose work spans cultural institutions, commercial environments, public and private hospitality spaces, intimate residences and products. Driven by human experience, compelling narratives and the profound power of beauty, Studio & Projects explores design as a holistic exercise by drawing upon the expertise of a diverse range of collaborators. Lee also founded Black Folks in Design, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to bring awareness to and promote the cultural contributions, excellence and importance of Black designers.
Landscape Architecture: TERREMOTO
The Landscape Architecture award recognizes an individual or firm for their contributions to the integration between the built, urban and natural environments and for advancing the understanding of spatial experiences. This year’s award is presented to TERREMOTO.
TERREMOTO is a landscape architecture design studio with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. David Godshall and Alain Peauroi founded the firm in 2012 with the intention of building gardens and landscapes that were explorations and investigations into ideas and culture. TERREMOTO creates well-built site-specific landscapes that respond to client needs while challenging historical and contemporary landscape construction methods, materials and formal conventions. The studio’s design approach is to create “omni-positive gardens and landscapes that are fair, just and generous in their relationships to labor, materials and ecology.” The firm’s portfolio includes a diverse range of projects with various scales and typologies; one such project involves gardens that respond to the needs of all.
Product Design: Jules Sherman
The Product Design award, given to an individual or firm for the forward-thinking design of objects, products and materials, is presented to Jules Sherman.
Sherman is a leader in pediatric medical device design and health-care innovation. Inspired by a traumatic hospital birth experience in 2010, she turned her focus from consumer product design to transforming pediatric and maternal health care through FDA-cleared devices that prioritize safety and efficacy. As director of the Biodesign Program at Children’s National Hospital, Sherman collaborates with clinicians, engineers and families to develop innovative devices and teaches design-thinking methodology for medical device development to nurses and students. Her work includes products like Trach Sense, which detects tracheostomy complications; the Kangarobe, which improves skin-to-skin care in neonatal ICUs; Primo-Lacto, a closed system for colostrum collection; and NOOMA Tech, which facilitates delayed cord clamping for preterm infants. In her role as adjunct professor at the University of Maryland, Sherman mentors engineering students and contributes to academic research.
NATIONAL DESIGN AWARDS JURY
National Design Award winners are selected by a multidisciplinary jury of design practitioners, educators and leaders. Nominations are open to all and are also solicited from experts from a wide range of design and related fields.
The 2025 National Design Awards jury was chaired by Maurice D. Cox, the Emma Bloomberg Professor in Residence of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. The jury included Miren Arzalluz, director of Palais Galliera, Musée de la Mode de Paris and recently appointed director general of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Gail Bichler, creative director of The New York Times Magazine; Carson Chan, director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment at the Museum of Modern Art; Llisa Demetrios, chief curator of the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity; Michelle Millar Fisher, the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and designer Fernando Laposse.
SUPPORT
The National Design Awards are made possible by Shelby and Frederick Gans, Jon Iwata, Lisa Roberts and David Seltzer, Alexandra and Paul Herzan, Chris and Irma Fralic, Kim Schuessler and other generous sponsors.
The National Design Award trophies are created by the Corning Museum of Glass.
ABOUT COOPER HEWITT, SMITHSONIAN DESIGN MUSEUM
Cooper Hewitt is America’s design museum. Inclusive, innovative and experimental, the museum’s dynamic exhibitions, education programs, master’s program, publications and online resources inspire, educate and empower people through design. An integral part of the Smithsonian Institution—the world’s largest museum, education and research complex—Cooper Hewitt is located on New York City’s Museum Mile in the landmarked Carnegie Mansion. Steward of one of the world’s most diverse and comprehensive design collections—over 215,000 objects that range from an ancient Egyptian faience cup dating to about 1100 BC to contemporary 3D-printed objects and digital code—Cooper Hewitt welcomes everyone to discover the importance of design and its power to change the world.
For more information, visit www.cooperhewitt.org or follow @cooperhewitt on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.
